After marathon meeting, Dutchess County Legislature OKs spending for new jail

The Dutchess County Jail is on North Hamilton Street in Poughkeepsie..
Tania Barricklo — Daily Freeman file

POUGHKEEPSIE >> In an 19-6 vote, Dutchess County legislators voted early Tuesday to spend $192 million to build a new 569-bed Justice and Transition Center to replace the existing county jail.

The vote came after more than seven hours of public comment and legislative debate and despite the pleas of many to block or delay the project for 90 days to give time for further study.

Before the meeting, roughly 50 people rallied outside the Dutchess County Office Building in opposition to the jail. Inside the building, roughly 130 residents packed the legislative chambers, while dozens more filled the hallway outside the room and a waiting area on the building’s first floor.

The vast majority of 70 residents speaking implored legislators to vote “no” on the proposal, which they called unnecessary and said will not only drain needed funds away from much-needed programs that will help keep people out of jail but also overburden property taxpayers.

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Clinton resident J.P. Ferraro, the owner of radio station WHVW, said a new jail would be “a monument to failed policies” and a “colossal waste of taxpayer money,” and that the county needs to spend money on youth programs and programs for the mentally ill.

“I feel ashamed we could be spending upwards of $2 million to lock up our children, but we can’t spend $1 million to open the YMCA,” said city of Poughkeepsie Councilman Steven Plank. “That hurts my heart.”

Several residents said Dutchess County is “bucking the trend” because its jail population is increasing at a time when crime and arrests in the county are down.

“Incarceration is more about policy than it is about crime,” said Dominick Ignaffo, a former county legislator from Hyde Park.

“You cannot jail your way out of the situation,” agreed Earl Brown of the city of Poughkeepsie. Brown said the county first must invest “in the humans.”

“If you spend this money, you won’t have money for other programs,” said Mary Hannah Williams.

Tivoli resident Shawn Fischer said the county is using the jail to warehouse people who are mentally ill and drug-addicted rather than investing in programs that could help them.

“Incarceration should be the last resort,” she said. “We lock people up because we don’t have alternatives.”

Several opponents warned legislators that voting for the project would be remembered in the 2017 election.

A handful of supporters of the project, though, said that until the county is able to house all of its inmates within the county’s borders, it can’t provide the programs needed to address any underlying problems.

Christopher Szelsky said it is “inhumane” to inmates and their families to have prisoners housed outside the county, which can mean inmates get fewer visits from their loved ones.

John Curizo of East Fishkill said county needs to deal with the overcrowding that has plagued the jail for decades, and he urged lawmakers to not be swayed by re-election concerns.

“Being a legislator means doing what’s right for the community. That doesn’t mean always doing what’s popular,” he said.

While most Democrats opposed the project, saying it’s been rushed through without time for serious consideration by legislators, Republicans said the state Commission of Corrections is forcing the county’s hand.

For more than three decades, the Dutchess County Jail has struggled with overcrowding. For years, the county operated the jail with a series of state-granted variances allowing the jail to house more inmates than its capacity. But when the county repeatedly declined to heed the state’s admonishments to address overcrowding, the state in 2004 yanked those variances, forcing the county to spend millions of dollars each year to house its excess inmates in jails across the state.

Legislature Minority Leader Micki Strawinski and other Democrats urged their colleagues to delay the vote for 90 days to give lawmakers time to appeal to the state Commission of Corrections to give the county more time and to give new alternative programs time to work.

Republicans, though, said it’s time for the county to step up and solve the problem.

In 2014, with a renewed promise to solve overcrowding, the state gave the county permission to use temporary housing pods at the jail site to bring the county’s inmates home, but it said the county must approve a new jail plan by April 1 of this year or face the loss of the housing pods.

“I’m not willing to play chicken with the state,” said Legislator James Miccio, R-Fishkill

County Executive Marc Molinaro has said the goal of the new facility is not only to provide adequate jail space within the county’s borders to house the county’s inmates, but to create a criminal justice campus that is “uniquely different” by developing a project that provides the capacity necessary to meet the county’s current and future needs — and with “a very keen eye” on individuals’ needs and how the county can meet those needs to drive down recidivism.

The project includes $154,276,000 for the Justice and Transition Center, $36,509,000 for a law-enforcement center that would house the Sheriff’s Office’s operations, $550,000 for special populations and youth funding and $810,000 in bond-issuing costs. The new jail would have 569 beds, including areas specifically identified for special populations, and assumes a 15 percent growth in incarceration over the next 30 years.

As planned, the county will demolish the current Sheriff’s Office facility — built in the late 1920s as the county jail — and the 1984 section of the current jail on North Hamilton Street in Poughkeepsie. It will construct a new Sheriff’s Office at a cost of $36 million and a renovated and expanded jail.

Administration officials have said the overall cost of the debt, to be fully repaid by 2047, will be $274 million.

Molinaro said if Dutchess housed inmates in other counties’ jails during that same time, it would cost the county about $310 million.

He said the county also will realize savings as a result of reduced staffing costs.

And, he said, county residents shouldn’t worry that their taxes will go up because of the new jail.

“I certainly can guarantee Dutchess County taxpayers will not see increases in their taxes because of it,” he said.

All of the Legislature’s Republicans, along with Democrat Barbara Jeter-Jackson of the city of Poughkeepsie, voted in favor of the measure.

About the Author

Since 1990, Patricia R. Doxsey has been a reporter for the Freeman, covering politics, crime, and government affairs. Reach the author at pdoxsey@freemanonline.com
or follow Patricia R. on Twitter: @pattiatfreeman.